Far From Home - Chapter 40: Chapter 40

Early December
5 missed calls, all of them from Aaron.
Jake's heart raced as he looked at the screen of his phone. He had slept in quite late, and apparently crashed pretty hard, because somehow throughout the entire night, he hadn't heard a single one of them. Scrolling over the notifications on his screen, he noticed the timing. The first came in at 1:30 AM, the next at 1:32, another at 1:38, and then two at 5:00 and 5:01 respectively.
Shit, Aaron. What the fuck?
There were messages from other people on his screen, but he paid them no mind as his eyes darted to the three Aaron had left him.
Fuck man
Answer me
Then an hour ago:
Call me asap
What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?
Goddamnit, how did I miss this?
Panic surged through his veins as he immediately stumbled out of bed to find his truck keys. Calling Aaron as he went, Jake's eyes scoured his things as the familiar dial began sounding in his ear. He tripped on his own foot as he found his jacket to locate his keys, only remembering once the lanyard was in his hand that he no longer had a vehicle, and ultimately couldn't do a goddamned thing if Aaron was in trouble.
Ricky. Maybe Ricky can take me.
Fuck, is Ricky still here?
He frustratedly threw his keys out onto the bed.
Aaron picked up after the third ring and Jake nearly broke the phone from gripping it so hard.
"Fuck, Aaron. Are you okay?" He rushed out as soon as he heard his best friend breathe.
"Hey." Aaron's voice came through wavering and uncertain.
It scared the shit out of Jake.
"Hey? Yeah, hey. What's going on?"
Silence. Unbearable silence. Jake didn't hear Aaron say a word, but he did hear his own heartbeat in his ears, adrenaline coursing through him from the second he woke up to check his phone. His hand nearly shook from the rush, but Jake kept the phone steady as he waited for an explanation.
"Aaron."
His best friend didn't speak, but Jake could hear him breathing. He was alive, that much Jake could tell. There was something different about the way he sounded. Something alarming in the way his breaths came in over the line that Jake might have thought for a moment he was either having a panic attack or trying really hard not to. Aaron doesn't do that.
"Keller." Jake's voice was firm—or at least he prayed it was. "Talk to me. Are you hurt?"
If the lack of words didn't kill him, the obvious sound of a breakdown did. Aaron was crying. Jake had only seen him cry on a handful occasions, but this was clearly one of them. He could hear it as clear as day even though it seemed like his friend was trying his best to get his shit together so he could answer. What the fuck, Aaron?
Jake's mind went racing to find the answer for him.
His father must've really hurt him this time. Katherine must've cheated on him—no, scratch that. His stupidity finally got him in trouble and now he needed to be bailed out of jail. Maybe it was his mother... maybe his father went too far on her–
Aaron's voice broke his train of thought, but he almost wished it hadn't.
"Hunter killed himself."
Jake swore he might have stopped breathing.
"What?" He whispered.
"He fuckin'..." Aaron tried to breathe, but it came in stifled. "Last night... he's dead..."
Holy fuck.
"Oh God."
Jake's body ran still. It didn't seem real, nor did he want it to be. He was convinced he was still asleep. This was just a dream he needed to wake up from, if only he could manage to pull himself out of it. It couldn't be real.
Hunter? Not Hunter. This is a joke.
Words, he needed to find words.
"When...? I–"
When? He called me.
Fuck, he called me.
When?!
"Around one." Aaron mumbled.
Shit. Jake tried blinking himself into reality. Shit. Shit. Shit.
He was alive when he called, and now he wasn't. 12:33. Hunter was alive at 12:33 AM, and sometime in those next twenty-seven minutes he wasn't. How many minutes had passed between the time he called and the time he died? Was it immediately after? Did he think about it only after Jake failed to answer? When was the exact moment he decided he wasn't going to live anymore?
Was it quick or did that pain last for minutes?
Who found him?
What was the last thing he thought about before he died?
Was I the last person he called?
Fuck... was I the last person he called?
Jake's mind spun so fast it nearly made him dizzy.
No. No. None of that. Fuck, stop. This isn't real.
Hunter is alive. This is just a fucked up dream.
"Aar–" Suddenly he couldn't even find words.
"Shit... Jake."
Aaron was still crying. It was unmistakable, but Jake didn't want to believe it. He couldn't believe it. Hunter couldn't be dead.
They were supposed to reconcile. It was supposed to get better. Hunter was supposed to apologize and Jake was supposed to give him a second chance. He couldn't fathom the idea that all of that was no longer something obtainable. Hunter had to be alive, Jake wasn't ready for him to be gone like that. I wanted him gone like distanced, not gone like...
Fuck.
"I..." Jake found himself completely lost.
"Can you come home early? I– I don't know what to do, man..."
Aaron sounded so much like a scared little boy that Jake thought for a moment he needed to find the source of his pain and break its arm, but there was no way of identifying an object of attention for what had made Aaron break this time. Jake knew how to fight Aaron's battles for him, but not this one... never this one. He heard the boy that he had come to know as his brother broken on the other end of the line, and Jake could do absolutely nothing to stop it because he knew as soon as reality hit, he would likely feel the same. It didn't seem to be catching up to him the way it had with Aaron. Aaron was absolutely devastated and likely alone, whereas Jake was standing in the middle of his dorm room, staring at the wall like he did every other day, trying to feel anything at all.
"Yeah." He agreed for lack of anything else to say. "Yeah, of course."
His thoughts were running circles around his head, trying to make sense out of something that he didn't know the first step in understanding. Questions upon questions popped up one after another, but he didn't know where to begin answering them with words he could comprehend.
This is just another nightmare. I'm going to wake up as soon as this call ends. I have to wake up. This isn't real.
"Tomorrow, okay?" Jake tried sounding like a level-headed human being who wasn't about to drive himself nuts in thought. "I can ask Ricky. I think he's still here."
"Okay." Aaron sniffled, trying to take in a deep breath.
"Where's Katherine?"
Before he could even comprehend that he was doing it, Jake was finding himself in 'handle the crisis' mode. He couldn't even think about himself anymore. He couldn't let all those questions cloud his judgment. He couldn't contemplate why he wasn't feeling anything, because at the moment, Aaron was feeling everything, and he was seemingly alone to do so. Jake had to make Aaron a plan. He had to talk him into something reasonable and make sure he would get through until he could see him again.
"At work... I... she went to work..." Aaron was trying to explain, but his mind wasn't catching up to him.
"Did she know before she left?"
"No. I... his sister called me and I went over there... I just got home an hour ago..."
"You went to the Andersons'?" Jake blinked trying to put together the night's events.
"Yeah, I... she found him and–"
Holy shit.
He dropped his calm tone for a minute. "Fuck, Aaron. Did you see him?"
"No." Aaron took a deep breath, quite audibly. "No, I didn't... see him. Peterson told me not to."
That's about the only good thing Peterson has ever done.
"Fucking hell."
"Jake, it– it was so weird. He was there, but he wasn't... and I– fuck..."
"Alright, calm down." Jake felt oddly paternalistic. "Look, I need you to put that all aside for a minute so we can talk through this. You good?"
He sniffled, and presumably took the time to nod his way through it, but Jake couldn't see on the other line of the phone. "Yeah, okay."
"Can you drive right now? I think you need to go get Katherine. Either that or I can call her–"
"I can do it."
"Okay." Jake nodded. "Go get Kath. There's not a damn thing she can do in that dealership right now with all the Andersons like this. It'll drive her crazy being there and you need her more than they do."
"Jake, she's working. I can't just tell her to leave, I–"
"Aaron. Hunter is dead. The Andersons don't give a shit about Katherine right now."
'Hunter is dead.'
The words felt haunting to part with, but they still didn't feel real. No matter how much he talked Aaron through it, it wasn't helping him process it himself any easier. They were words, that was it. He was speaking a plan into action, not settling with the reality it left behind.
"I'll get there tomorrow morning, but until then you just chill, okay? Don't go to work, just stay home with Katherine and chill. I know you don't like to sit back, but just this once listen to me, alright?"
He needed to calm him down before he broke. Aaron was admittedly easy to break, but he always bounced back quickly. This time, Jake was scared that wouldn't be the case. All the times Aaron had broken down it had been much more reserved—his true feelings masked behind a layer of humor and deflection he used for all the harder things in life like his father's abuse and girls that broke his heart. Nothing could have prepared him for this. Losing a friend was hard, but the cause of death was harder. Jake couldn't feel it now, but perhaps the shock of it all was what made it even that more unfathomable to comprehend.
"Alright." Aaron agreed without a fight.
"Okay." Jake took a deep breath. "Okay, look I'll talk to you later... you can call me if you need something, but I think I really just need to... fuck, I don't know..."
"I'll text you updates."
"Yeah... okay."
"Okay." Aaron sniffled, the calm settling between them in quite an eerie way. "Let me know when you're heading up."
"I will." Jake whispered. "Take care of yourself, okay?"
"Yeah. Bye, Jake."
"See you tomorrow."
Jake hung up.
The eerie silence that filled the room as he stared out into it was a stark reminder that the phone call had taken place in reality, and here he was forced to deal with it. He blinked one, two, three times, but no matter how hard he tried, it wasn't a dream, and he wasn't waking up again. Aaron's words replayed in the back of his head like a memory solidifying into stone before he had a second to stop it from committing to a space in his mind where it would live forever.
Hunter killed himself.
Holy fucking shit.
Jake realized then that all the soapy movies he watched with McKenna and Katherine got it wrong. His phone didn't fall from his clutch, the weight of the world didn't crash down on his shoulders, his knees didn't crumble out from underneath him as he hyperventilated through the first round of tears, in fact he didn't know if he had taken a breath at all. Everything was still. Silent. Waiting for him to react, but he couldn't. He stared at the call log on his phone from where he had just hung up on Aaron, and saw 'Anderson' below it, black words on a white screen telling him the past twenty-four hours were real, and he might have just fucked up bad.
Hunter called me.
Hunter fucking called me.
I didn't answer.
His response was delayed—the first breath that shuddered through him had been held off long enough that his lungs ached from failing to let it in.
"Fuck."
He tossed the phone down on his bed, freeing his hands to where one of them would find the comfortable place over his heart to press against his chest just to make sure he could still feel it.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck..."
Jake cherished knowing he could feel anything at all as his fingers dug into his shirt. He breathed disbelieving pants that came in slowly, but heavily, weighing on him like a promise to faint if he dared to feel anything more. Scanning over every single thing in his tiny dorm room, his eyes had nowhere safe left to go to run from thought. If he closed them, he didn't know what kind of imagery would take the room's place, but he didn't know if he wanted to be awake anymore to deal with whatever he was or wasn't feeling.
It seemed like too much and not enough all at the same time.
"Goddamnit, Hunter." He whispered to the empty room, but it wasn't malice that held the sentiment this time.
Fuck, this is real.
Jake's body felt numb. His mind hazed over like he hadn't woken up at all, although the pounding heartbeat in his chest and the sickening adrenaline fueling his body were not-so-subtle reminders that he was awake and dealing with it all in real time. It didn't help him feel any more inclined to scream, or cry, or want to pull his hair out... it just made him overwhelmingly tired, if only he could get his hand to stop shaking enough to convince himself he could fall asleep again.
But damned if he wasn't going to try. He didn't want to think. He didn't want to feel. He didn't want any of it to be real, but if it was going to be, he was going to wallow in it for a moment before he had to get up and put on a happy face to be a human being for Aaron. It was sinking in like a rock thrown into the pond of his chest, and with every nagging reminder that Hunter was dead, a part of Jake sank further and further with it.
Why did he do it?
Is it my fault?
What if I would have answered the phone?
He sank back into his bed imagining that maybe he hadn't woken up at all this morning. If he closed his eyes and pretended everything was fine, maybe he could open them and it would be. Cursing himself for resorting to something so childish, Jake pulled his sweatshirt hood over his head and pulled the strings until the cloth consumed him whole. He curled his legs up into his chest and tried not to think about how his body was moving into preparing him for pain even when he wasn't capable of feeling it yet. It felt like a betrayal that he knew what was coming, and yet his head couldn't catch up.
What the fuck have I done?
He stared out at Andre's empty bed in front of him and didn't blink until it physically pained him not to. His eyes burned, but they didn't hold tears—not yet, not quite. The first hour moved agonizingly slow, his brain spiraling to evaluate his own guilt in an action he was finding more and more possible to conceive of. When it all became too much and the first tear fell, he didn't bother to move to swipe it away. Jake remained impossibly still for as many hours as his body would allow him, crying tears he didn't even feel as the answers to the questions he found became too real to ignore.